Washington badly needed aid from Europe, but there every important
government was monarchical and it was not easy for a young republic,
the child of revolution, to secure an ally. France tingled with joy at
American victories and sorrowed at American reverses, but motives were
mingled and perhaps hatred of England was stronger than love for liberty
in America. The young La Fayette had a pure zeal, but he would not have
fought for the liberty of colonists in Mexico as he did for those in
Virginia; and the difference was that service in Mexico would not hurt
the enemy of France so recently triumphant. He hated England and said so
quite openly. The thought of humiliating and destroying that "insolent
nation" was always to him an inspiration. Vergennes, the French Foreign
Minister, though he lacked genius, was a man of boundless zeal and
energy. He was at work at four o'clock in the morning and he spent his
long days in toil for his country. He believed that England was the
tyrant of the seas, "the monster against whom we should be always
prepared," a greedy, perfidious neighbor, the natural enemy of France.
From the first days of the trouble in regard to the Stamp Act Vergennes
had rejoiced that England's own children were turning against her. He
had French military officers in England spying on her defenses. When
war broke out he showed no nice regard for the rules of neutrality and
helped the colonies in every way possible. It was a French writer who
led in these activities. Beaumarchais is known to the world chiefly as
the creator of the character of Figaro, which has become the type of the
bold, clever, witty, and intriguing rascal, but he played a real part
in the American Revolution. We need not inquire too closely into his
motives. There was hatred of the English, that "audacious, unbridled,
shameless people," and there was, too, the zeal for liberal ideas which
made Queen Marie Antoinette herself take a pretty interest in the "dear
republicans" overseas who were at the same time fighting the national
enemy. Beaumarchais secured from the government money with which he
purchased supplies to be sent to America. He had a great warehouse
in Paris, and, under the rather fantastic Spanish name of Roderigue
Hortalez & Co., he sent vast quantities of munitions and clothing
to America. Cannon, not from private firms but from the government
arsenals, were sent across the sea. When Vergennes showed scruples
about this violation of neutrality, the answer of Beaumarchais was that
governments were not bound by rules of morality applicable to private
persons. Vergennes learned well the lesson and, while protesting to
the British ambassador in Paris that France was blameless, he permitted
outrageous breaches of the laws of neutrality.
Secret help was one thing, open alliance another. Early in 1776 Silas
Deane, a member from Connecticut of the Continental Congress, was named
as envoy to France to secure French aid. The day was to come when
Deane should believe the struggle against Britain hopeless and counsel
submission, but now he showed a furious zeal. He knew hardly a word of
French, but this did not keep him from making his elaborate programme
well understood. Himself a trader, he promised France vast profits from
the monopoly of the trade of America when independence should be secure.
He gave other promises not more easy of fulfillment. To Frenchmen
zealous for the ideals of liberty and seeking military careers in
America he promised freely commissions as colonels and even generals and
was the chief cause of that deluge of European officers which proved
to Washington so annoying. It was through Deane's activities that La
Fayette became a volunteer. Through him came too the proposal to send
to America the Comte de Broglie who should be greater than colonel or
general--a generalissimo, a dictator. He was to brush aside Washington,
to take command of the American armies, and by his prestige and skill to
secure France as an ally and win victory in the field. For such services
Broglie asked only despotic power while he served and for life a great
pension which would, he declared, not be one-hundredth part of his real
value. That Deane should have considered a scheme so fantastic reveals
the measure of his capacity, and by the end of 1776 Benjamin Franklin
was sent to Paris to bring his tried skill to bear upon the problem
of the alliance. With Deane and Franklin as a third member of the
commission was associated Arthur Lee who had vainly sought aid at the
courts of Spain and Prussia.
France was, however, coy. The end of 1776 saw the colonial cause at
a very low ebb, with Washington driven from New York and about to be
driven from Philadelphia. Defeat is not a good argument for an alliance.
France was willing to send arms to America and willing to let American
privateers use freely her ports. The ship which carried Franklin to
France soon busied herself as a privateer and reaped for her crew a
great harvest of prize money. In a single week of June, 1777, this ship
captured a score of British merchantmen, of which more than two thousand
were taken by Americans during the war. France allowed the American
privateers to come and go as they liked, and gave England smooth words,
but no redress. There is little wonder that England threatened to hang
captured American sailors as pirates.
It was the capture of Burgoyne at Saratoga which brought decision to
France. That was the victory which Vergennes had demanded before he
would take open action. One British army had surrendered. Another was
in an untenable position in Philadelphia. It was known that the British
fleet had declined. With the best of it in America, France was the more
likely to win successes in Europe. The Bourbon king of France could,
too, draw into the war the Bourbon king of Spain, and Spain had good
ships. The defects of France and Spain on the sea were not in ships but
in men. The invasion of England was not improbable and then less than
a score of years might give France both avenging justice for her recent
humiliation and safety for her future. Britain should lose America,
she should lose India, she should pay in a hundred ways for her past
triumphs, for the arrogance of Pitt, who had declared that he would so
reduce France that she should never again rise. The future should belong
not to Britain but to France. Thus it was that fervent patriotism argued
after the defeat of Burgoyne. Frederick the Great told his ambassador
at Paris to urge upon France that she had now a chance to strike England
which might never again come. France need not, he said, fear his enmity,
for he was as likely to help England as the devil to help a Christian.
Whatever doubts Vergennes may have entertained about an open alliance
with America were now swept away. The treaty of friendship with
America was signed on February 6, 1778. On the 13th of March the French
ambassador in London told the British Government, with studied
insolence of tone, that the United States were by their own declaration
independent. Only a few weeks earlier the British ministry had said that
there was no prospect of any foreign intervention to help the Americans
and now in the most galling manner France told George III the one thing
to which he would not listen, that a great part of his sovereignty was
gone. Each country withdrew its ambassador and war quickly followed.
France had not tried to make a hard bargain with the Americans.
She demanded nothing for herself and agreed not even to ask for the
restoration of Canada. She required only that America should never
restore the King's sovereignty in order to secure peace. Certain
sections of opinion in America were suspicious of France. Was she not
the old enemy who had so long harassed the frontiers of New England and
New York? If George III was a despot what of Louis XVI, who had not
even an elected Parliament to restrain him? Washington himself was
distrustful of France and months after the alliance had been concluded
he uttered the warning that hatred of England must not lead to
over-confidence in France. "No nation," he said, "is to be trusted
farther than it is bound by its interests." France, he thought, must
desire to recover Canada, so recently lost. He did not wish to see a
great military power on the northern frontier of the United States. This
would be to confirm the jeer of the Loyalists that the alliance was a
case of the wooden horse in Troy; the old enemy would come back in
the guise of a friend and would then prove to be master and bring the
colonies under a servitude compared with which the British supremacy
would seem indeed mild.
The intervention of France brought a cruel embarrassment to the Whig
patriot in England. He could rejoice and mourn with American patriots
because he believed that their cause was his own. It was as much the
interest of Norfolk as of Massachusetts that the new despotism of a
king, who ruled through a corrupt Parliament, should be destroyed. It
was, however, another matter when France took a share in the fight.
France fought less for freedom than for revenge, and the Englishman who,
like Coke of Norfolk, could daily toast Washington as the greatest
of men could not link that name with Louis XVI or with his minister
Vergennes. The currents of the past are too swift and intricate to be
measured exactly by the observer who stands on the shore of the present,
but it is arguable that the Whigs might soon have brought about peace
in England had it not been for the intervention of France. No serious
person any longer thought that taxation could be enforced upon America
or that the colonies should be anything but free in regulating their
own affairs. George III himself said that he who declared the taxing of
America to be worth what it cost was "more fit for Bedlam than a seat in
the Senate." The one concession Britain was not yet prepared to make was
Independence. But Burke and many other Whigs were ready now for this,
though Chatham still believed it would be the ruin of the British
Empire.
Chatham, however, was all for conciliation, and it is not hard to
imagine a group of wise men chosen from both sides, men British in blood
and outlook, sitting round a table and reaching an agreement to result
in a real independence for America and a real unity with Great Britain.
A century and a quarter later a bitter war with an alien race in South
Africa was followed by a result even more astounding. The surrender of
Burgoyne had made the Prime Minister, Lord North, weary of his position.
He had never been in sympathy with the King's policy and since the bad
news had come in December he had pondered some radical step which should
end the war. On February 17, 1778, before the treaty of friendship
between the United States and France had been made public, North
startled the House of Commons by introducing a bill repealing the tax on
tea, renouncing forever the right to tax America, and nullifying those
changes in the constitution of Massachusetts which had so rankled in the
minds of its people. A commission with full powers to negotiate peace
would proceed at once to America and it might suspend at its discretion,
and thus really repeal, any act touching America passed since 1763.
North had taken a sharp turn. The Whig clothes had been stolen by a Tory
Prime Minister and if he wished to stay in office the Whigs had not the
votes to turn him out. His supporters would accept almost anything in
order to dish the Whigs. They swallowed now the bill, and it became
law, but at the same time came, too, the war with France. It united the
Tories; it divided the Whigs. All England was deeply stirred. Nearly
every important town offered to raise volunteer forces at its own
expense. The Government soon had fifteen thousand men recruited at
private cost. Help was offered so freely that the Whig, John Wilkes,
actually introduced into Parliament a bill to prohibit gifts of money to
the Crown since this voluntary taxation gave the Crown money without
the consent of Parliament. The British patriot, gentle as he might
be towards America, fumed against France. This was no longer only a
domestic struggle between parties, but a war with an age-long foreign
enemy. The populace resented what they called the insolence and the
treachery of France and the French ambassador was pelted at Canterbury
as he drove to the seacoast on his recall. In a large sense the French
alliance was not an unmixed blessing for America, since it confused the
counsels of her best friends in England.
In spite of this it is probably true that from this time the mass of the
English people were against further attempts to coerce America. A change
of ministry was urgently demanded. There was one leader to whom the
nation looked in this grave crisis. The genius of William Pitt, Earl
of Chatham, had won the last war against France and he had promoted the
repeal of the Stamp Act. In America his name was held in reverence so
high that New York and Charleston had erected statues in his honor. When
the defeat of Burgoyne so shook the ministry that North was anxious to
retire, Chatham, but for two obstacles, could probably have formed a
ministry. One obstacle was his age; as the event proved, he was near
his end. It was, however, not this which kept him from office, but
the resolve of George III. The King simply said that he would not have
Chatham. In office Chatham would certainly rule and the King intended
himself to rule. If Chatham would come in a subordinate position, well;
but Chatham should not lead. The King declared that as long as even ten
men stood by him he would hold out and he would lose his crown rather
than call to office that clamorous Opposition which had attacked his
American policy. "I will never consent," he said firmly, "to removing
the members of the present Cabinet from my service." He asked North:
"Are you resolved at the hour of danger to desert me?" North remained in
office. Chatham soon died and, during four years still, George III was
master of England. Throughout the long history of that nation there
is no crisis in which one man took a heavier and more disastrous
responsibility.
News came to Valley Forge of the alliance with France and there
were great rejoicings. We are told that, to celebrate the occasion,
Washington dined in public. We are not given the bill of fare in that
scene of famine; but by the springtime tension in regard to supplies had
been relieved and we may hope that Valley Forge really feasted in
honor of the great event. The same news brought gloom to the British
in Philadelphia, for it had the stern meaning that the effort and loss
involved in the capture of that city were in vain. Washington held most
of the surrounding country so that supplies must come chiefly by sea.
With a French fleet and a French army on the way to America, the British
realized that they must concentrate their defenses. Thus the cheers at
Valley Forge were really the sign that the British must go.
Sir William Howe, having taken Philadelphia, was determined not to be
the one who should give it up. Feeling was bitter in England over the
ghastly failure of Burgoyne, and he had gone home on parole to defend
himself from his seat in the House of Commons. There Howe had a seat and
he, too, had need to be on hand. Lord George Germain had censured him
for his course and, to shield himself; was clearly resolved to make
scapegoats of others. So, on May 18, 1778, at Philadelphia there was
a farewell to Howe, which took the form of a Mischianza, something
approaching the medieval tournament. Knights broke lances in honor
of fair ladies, there were arches and flowers and fancy costumes,
and high-flown Latin and French, all in praise of the departing Howe.
Obviously the garrison of Philadelphia had much time on its hands and
could count upon, at least, some cheers from a friendly population. It
is remembered still, with moralizings on the turns in human fortune,
that Major André and Miss Margaret Shippen were the leaders in that gay
scene, the one, in the days to come, to be hanged by Washington as a
spy, because entrapped in the treason of Benedict Arnold, who became the
husband of the other.
On May 24, 1778, Sir Henry Clinton took over from Howe the command
of the British army in America and confronted a difficult problem. If
d'Estaing, the French admiral, should sail straight for the Delaware he
might destroy the fleet of little more than half his strength which lay
there, and might quickly starve Philadelphia into surrender. The British
must unite their forces to meet the peril from France, and New York, as
an island, was the best point for a defense, chiefly naval. A move to
New York was therefore urgent. It was by sea that the British had come
to Philadelphia, but it was not easy to go away by sea. There was not
room in the transports for the army and its encumbrances. Moreover, to
embark the whole force, a march of forty miles to New Castle, on the
lower Delaware, would be necessary and the retreating army was sure to
be harassed on its way by Washington. It would besides hardly be safe
to take the army by sea for the French fleet might be strong enough to
capture the flotilla.
There was nothing for it but, at whatever risk, to abandon Philadelphia
and march the army across New Jersey. It would be possible to take by
sea the stores and the three thousand Loyalists from Philadelphia, some
of whom would probably be hanged if they should be taken. Lord Howe, the
naval commander, did his part in a masterly manner. On the 18th of June
the British army marched out of Philadelphia and before the day was
over it was across the Delaware on the New Jersey side. That same day
Washington's army, free from its long exile at Valley Forge, occupied
the capital. Clinton set out on his long march by land and Howe worked
his laden ships down the difficult river to its mouth and, after delay
by winds, put to sea on the 28th of June. By a stroke of good fortune
he sailed the two hundred miles to New York in two days and missed the
great fleet of d'Estaing, carrying an army of four thousand men. On the
8th of July d'Estaing anchored at the mouth of the Delaware. Had not his
passage been unusually delayed and Howe's unusually quick, as Washington
noted, the British fleet and the transports in the Delaware would
probably have been taken and Clinton and his army would have shared the
fate of Burgoyne.
As it was, though Howe's fleet was clear away, Clinton's army had a bad
time in the march across New Jersey. Its baggage train was no less than
twelve miles long and, winding along roads leading sometimes through
forests, was peculiarly vulnerable to flank attack. In this type of
warfare Washington excelled. He had fought over this country and he knew
it well. The tragedy of Valley Forge was past. His army was now well
trained and well supplied. He had about the same number of men as the
British--perhaps sixteen thousand--and he was not encumbered by a long
baggage train. Thus it happened that Washington was across the Delaware
almost as soon as the British. He marched parallel with them on a line
some five miles to the north and was able to forge towards the head of
their column. He could attack their flank almost when he liked. Clinton
marched with great difficulty. He found bridges down. Not only was
Washington behind him and on his flank but General Gates was in front
marching from the north to attack him when he should try to cross the
Raritan River. The long British column turned southeastward toward Sandy
Hook, so as to lessen the menace from Gates. Between the half of the
army in the van and the other half in the rear was the baggage train.
The crisis came on Sunday the 28th of June, a day of sweltering heat. By
this time General Charles Lee, Washington's second in command, was in
a good position to attack the British rear guard from the north, while
Washington, marching three miles behind Lee, was to come up in the hope
of overwhelming it from the rear. Clinton's position was difficult but
he was saved by Lee's ineptitude. He had positive instructions to attack
with his five thousand men and hold the British engaged until Washington
should come up in overwhelming force. The young La Fayette was with Lee.
He knew what Washington had ordered, but Lee said to him: "You don't
know the British soldiers; we cannot stand against them." Lee's conduct
looks like deliberate treachery. Instead of attacking the British he
allowed them to attack him. La Fayette managed to send a message to
Washington in the rear; Washington dashed to the front and, as he came
up, met soldiers flying from before the British. He rode straight to
Lee, called him in flaming anger a "damned poltroon," and himself at
once took command. There was a sharp fight near Monmouth Court House.
The British were driven back and only the coming of night ended the
struggle. Washington was preparing to renew it in the morning, but
Clinton had marched away in the darkness. He reached the coast on the
30th of June, having lost on the way fifty-nine men from sunstroke,
over three hundred in battle, and a great many more by desertion. The
deserters were chiefly Germans, enticed by skillful offers of land.
Washington called for a reckoning from Lee. He was placed under arrest,
tried by court-martial, found guilty, and suspended from rank for twelve
months. Ultimately he was dismissed from the American army, less it
appears for his conduct at Monmouth than for his impudent demeanor
toward Congress afterwards.
These events on land were quickly followed by stirring events on the
sea. The delays of the British Admiralty of this time seem almost
incredible. Two hundred ships waited at Spithead for three months for
convoy to the West Indies, while all the time the people of the West
Indies, cut off from their usual sources of supply in America, were in
distress for food. Seven weeks passed after d'Estaing had sailed for
America before the Admiralty knew that he was really gone and sent
Admiral Byron, with fourteen ships, to the aid of Lord Howe. When
d'Estaing was already before New York Byron was still battling with
storms in mid-Atlantic, storms so severe that his fleet was entirely
dispersed and his flagship was alone when it reached Long Island on the
18th of August.
Meanwhile the French had a great chance. On the 11th of July their
fleet, much stronger than the British, arrived from the Delaware, and
anchored off Sandy Hook. Admiral Howe knew his danger. He asked for
volunteers from the merchant ships and the sailors offered themselves
almost to a man. If d'Estaing could beat Howe's inferior fleet, the
transports at New York would be at his mercy and the British army, with
no other source of supply, must surrender. Washington was near, to give
help on land. The end of the war seemed not far away. But it did not
come. The French admirals were often taken from an army command, and
d'Estaing was not a sailor but a soldier. He feared the skill of Howe,
a really great sailor, whose seven available ships were drawn up in line
at Sandy Hook so that their guns bore on ships coming in across the bar.
D'Estaing hovered outside. Pilots from New York told him that at high
tide there were only twenty-two feet of water on the bar and this was
not enough for his great ships, one of which carried ninety-one guns. On
the 22d of July there was the highest of tides with, in reality, thirty
feet of water on the bar, and a wind from the northeast which would have
brought d'Estaing's ships easily through the channel into the harbor.
The British expected the hottest naval fight in their history. At three
in the afternoon d'Estaing moved but it was to sail away out of sight.
Opportunity, though once spurned, seemed yet to knock again. The one
other point held by the British was Newport, Rhode Island. Here General
Pigot had five thousand men and only perilous communications by sea with
New York. Washington, keenly desirous to capture this army, sent General
Greene to aid General Sullivan in command at Providence, and d'Estaing
arrived off Newport to give aid. Greene had fifteen hundred fine
soldiers, Sullivan had nine thousand New England militia, and d'Estaing
four thousand French regulars. A force of fourteen thousand five hundred
men threatened five thousand British. But on the 9th of August Howe
suddenly appeared near Newport with his smaller fleet. D'Estaing put to
sea to fight him, and a great naval battle was imminent, when a terrific
storm blew up and separated and almost shattered both fleets. D'Estaing
then, in spite of American protests, insisted on taking the French ships
to Boston to refit and with them the French soldiers. Sullivan publicly
denounced the French admiral as having basely deserted him and his own
disgusted yeomanry left in hundreds for their farms to gather in the
harvest. In September, with d'Estaing safely away, Clinton sailed into
Newport with five thousand men. Washington's campaign against Rhode
Island had failed completely.
The summer of 1778 thus turned out badly for Washington. Help from
France which had aroused such joyous hopes in America had achieved
little and the allies were hurling reproaches at each other. French and
American soldiers had riotous fights in Boston and a French officer
was killed. The British, meanwhile, were landing at small ports on
the coast, which had been the haunts of privateers, and were not only
burning shipping and stores but were devastating the country with
Loyalist regiments recruited in America. The French told the Americans
that they were expecting too much from the alliance, and the cautious
Washington expressed fear that help from outside would relax effort at
home. Both were right. By the autumn the British had been reinforced
and the French fleet had gone to the West Indies. Truly the mountain
in labor of the French alliance seemed to have brought forth only
a ridiculous mouse. None the less was it to prove, in the end, the
decisive factor in the struggle.
The alliance with France altered the whole character of the war, which
ceased now to be merely a war in North America. France soon gained an
ally in Europe. Bourbon Spain had no thought of helping the colonies in
rebellion against their king, and she viewed their ambitions to extend
westward with jealous concern, since she desired for herself both sides
of the Mississippi. Spain, however, had a grievance against Britain,
for Britain would not yield Gibraltar, that rocky fragment of Spain
commanding the entrance to the Mediterranean which Britain had wrested
from her as she had wrested also Minorca and Florida.
So, in April, 1779, Spain joined France in war on Great Britain. France
agreed not only to furnish an army for the invasion of England but
never to make peace until Britain had handed back Gibraltar. The allies
planned to seize and hold the Isle of Wight. England has often been
threatened and yet has been so long free from the tramp of hostile
armies that we are tempted to dismiss lightly such dangers. But in the
summer of 1779 the danger was real. Of warships carrying fifty guns or
more France and Spain together had one hundred and twenty-one, while
Britain had seventy. The British Channel fleet for the defense of home
coasts numbered forty ships of the line while France and Spain together
had sixty-six. Nor had Britain resources in any other quarter upon which
she could readily draw. In the West Indies she had twenty-one ships
of the line while France had twenty-five. The British could not find
comfort in any supposed superiority in the structure of their ships.
Then and later, as Nelson admitted when he was fighting Spain, the
Spanish ships were better built than the British.
Lurking in the background to haunt British thought was the growing
American navy. John Paul was a Scots sailor, who had been a slave trader
and subsequently master of a West India merchantman, and on going
to America had assumed the name of Jones. He was a man of boundless
ambition, vanity, and vigor, and when he commanded American privateers
he became a terror to the maritime people from whom he sprang. In the
summer of 1779 when Jones, with a squadron of four ships, was haunting
the British coasts, every harbor was nervous. At Plymouth a boom blocked
the entrance, but other places had not even this defense. Sir Walter
Scott has described how, on September 17, 1779, a squadron, under John
Paul Jones, came within gunshot of Leith, the port of Edinburgh. The
whole surrounding country was alarmed, since for two days the squadron
had been in sight beating up the Firth of Forth. A sudden squall, which
drove Jones back, probably saved Edinburgh from being plundered. A few
days later Jones was burning ships in the Humber and, on the 23d of
September, he met off Flamborough Head and, after a desperate fight,
captured two British armed ships: the Serapis, a 40-gun vessel newly
commissioned, and the Countess of Scarborough, carrying 20 guns, both
of which were convoying a fleet. The fame of his exploit rang through
Europe. Jones was a regularly commissioned officer in the navy of
the United States, but neutral powers, such as Holland, had not yet
recognized the republic and to them there was no American navy. The
British regarded him as a traitor and pirate and might possibly have
hanged him had he fallen into their hands.
Terrible days indeed were these for distracted England. In India,
France, baulked twenty years earlier, was working for her entire
overthrow, and in North Africa, Spain was using the Moors to the same
end. As time passed the storm grew more violent. Before the year 1780
ended Holland had joined England's enemies. Moreover, the northern
states of Europe, angry at British interference on the sea with their
trade, and especially at her seizure of ships trying to enter blockaded
ports, took strong measures. On March 8, 1780, Russia issued a
proclamation declaring that neutral ships must be allowed to come and go
on the sea as they liked. They might be searched by a nation at war for
arms and ammunition but for nothing else. It would moreover be illegal
to declare a blockade of a port and punish neutrals for violating it,
unless their ships were actually caught in an attempt to enter the
port. Denmark and Sweden joined Russia in what was known as the Armed
Neutrality and promised that they would retaliate upon any nation which
did not respect the conditions laid down.
In domestic affairs Great Britain was divided. The Whigs and Tories were
carrying on a warfare shameless beyond even the bitter partisan strife
of later days. In Parliament the Whigs cheered at military defeats
which might serve to discredit the Tory Government. The navy was torn
by faction. When, in 1778, the Whig Admiral Keppel fought an indecisive
naval battle off Ushant and was afterwards accused by one of his
officers, Sir Hugh Palliser, of not pressing the enemy hard enough,
party passion was invoked. The Whigs were for Keppel, the Tories for
Palliser, and the London mob was Whig. When Keppel was acquitted there
were riotous demonstrations; the house of Palliser was wrecked, and he
himself barely escaped with his life. Whig naval officers declared that
they had no chance of fair treatment at the hands of a Tory Admiralty,
and Lord Howe, among others, now refused to serve. For a time British
supremacy on the sea disappeared and it was only regained in April,
1782, when the Tory Admiral Rodney won a great victory in the West
Indies against the French.
A spirit of violence was abroad in England. The disabilities of the
Roman Catholics were a gross scandal. They might not vote or hold public
office. Yet when, in 1780, Parliament passed a bill removing some of
their burdens dreadful riots broke out in London. A fanatic, Lord George
Gordon, led a mob to Westminster and, as Dr. Johnson expressed it,
"insulted" both Houses of Parliament. The cowed ministry did nothing
to check the disturbance. The mob burned Newgate jail, released the
prisoners from this and other prisons, and made a deliberate attempt to
destroy London by fire. Order was restored under the personal direction
of the King, who, with all his faults, was no coward. At the same time
the Irish Parliament, under Protestant lead, was making a Declaration of
Independence which, in 1782, England was obliged to admit by formal act
of Parliament. For the time being, though the two monarchies had the
same king, Ireland, in name at least, was free of England.
Washington's enemy thus had embarrassments enough. Yet these very years,
1779 and 1780, were the years in which he came nearest to despair. The
strain of a great movement is not in the early days of enthusiasm, but
in the slow years when idealism is tempered by the strife of opinion
and self-interest which brings delay and disillusion. As the war went
on recruiting became steadily more difficult. The alliance with France
actually worked to discourage it since it was felt that the cause
was safe in the hands of this powerful ally. Whatever Great Britain's
difficulties about finance they were light compared with Washington's.
In time the "continental dollar" was worth only two cents. Yet soldiers
long had to take this money at its face value for their pay, with the
result that the pay for three months would scarcely buy a pair of
boots. There is little wonder that more than once Washington had to face
formidable mutiny among his troops. The only ones on whom he could rely
were the regulars enlisted by Congress and carefully trained. The worth
of the militia, he said, "depends entirely on the prospects of the day;
if favorable, they throng to you; if not, they will not move." They
played a chief part in the prosperous campaign of 1777, when Burgoyne
was beaten. In the next year, before Newport, they wholly failed General
Sullivan and deserted shamelessly to their homes.
By 1779 the fighting had shifted to the South. Washington personally
remained in the North to guard the Hudson and to watch the British in
New York. He sent La Fayette to France in January, 1779, there to urge
not merely naval but military aid on a great scale. La Fayette came back
after an absence of a little over a year and in the end France
promised eight thousand men who should be under Washington's control as
completely as if they were American soldiers. The older nation accepted
the principle that the officers in the younger nation which she was
helping should rank in their grade before her own. It was a magnanimity
reciprocated nearly a century and a half later when a great American
army in Europe was placed under the supreme command of a Marshal of
France.